Wanted - Women Conductors
A recruiting poster for the London General Omnibus Company which was seeking women conductors (clippies) due to the shortage of men in the midst of World War I. The first such female conductor, a Mrs G Duncan, started work for the Thomas Tilling Company in 1915.
The LGOC, then the largest omnibus company in the city, went on to employ some 4,600 female clippies (so-called because of the ticket-clipping machines they used) during the war. Eventually some 18,000 women were employed by transport companies in London alone in a variety of roles; however, men generally received better pay and conditions. Equal pay was never achieved, but after a strike, women in transport companies nationally did get the war bonus that men were already receiving.
At the end of the war, many women were forced out of their jobs, regardless of how well they had performed them, to make way for men returning from the armed forces. The whole process was repeated in the Second World War when some 20,000 women worked for transport companies in London alone, but again many lost those jobs to men returning from military service.
The first female bus driver in London did not appear until 1974!
Seen in the London Transport Museum in Convent Garden.
Wanted - Women Conductors
A recruiting poster for the London General Omnibus Company which was seeking women conductors (clippies) due to the shortage of men in the midst of World War I. The first such female conductor, a Mrs G Duncan, started work for the Thomas Tilling Company in 1915.
The LGOC, then the largest omnibus company in the city, went on to employ some 4,600 female clippies (so-called because of the ticket-clipping machines they used) during the war. Eventually some 18,000 women were employed by transport companies in London alone in a variety of roles; however, men generally received better pay and conditions. Equal pay was never achieved, but after a strike, women in transport companies nationally did get the war bonus that men were already receiving.
At the end of the war, many women were forced out of their jobs, regardless of how well they had performed them, to make way for men returning from the armed forces. The whole process was repeated in the Second World War when some 20,000 women worked for transport companies in London alone, but again many lost those jobs to men returning from military service.
The first female bus driver in London did not appear until 1974!
Seen in the London Transport Museum in Convent Garden.